Coyotes have come to the city. I sit here writing in the foreshortened suburban night and listen to them howling and singing out back, hidden in what we used to call a gulch but is now called a green belt. A coyote can hold a note a lot longer than you think.

To many, they are a dangerous nuisance. Pet cats and puppies disappear. Coyotes, or "ghosts of the city" as a recent study calls them, get the blame. That study (pdf), by Ohio State’s Stanley Gehrt, says coyotes "have become the top carnivores in an increasing number of urban areas across North America…"

If pets disappear, though, so do skunks and rats. I think it’s a fair trade.

Years ago I sat on a little rise near the Rio Grande with my father and watched a pair of coyotes tag-team a deer, one resting while the other ran the deer in circles. The next, fully rested, took up the game so the partner could rest. It took four cycles. I’ll spare you the end of the story, except to say the coyotes seemed skilled and well-fed.

You know why coyotes do so well? Because they are not ideologues.They take great advantage of an evolved mammalian trait too often derided by humans as lack of conviction or commitment: mental flexibility, a willingness to live with uncertainty and unpredictability so that more alternative courses of action are opened.

Coyotes, we say, are wily. As regards humans, the English poet John Keats called it "negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

Every ideologue in human history has failed. That’s because most ideas are contingent and bound up with current or past circumstances and often unsuited to tomorrow’s risks and opportunities. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized this. It’s why Jefferson said we need a revolution every generation. The U.S. Constitution is not an idea, and it’s a terrible mistake to read it like a list of commandments. The Constitution’s greatest feature is the inbuilt recognition of the need for its own mutability.

Jefferson, however, did hold one truth as immutable or "self-evident": human equality. Does this contradict the fundamental insight of the Enlightenment, the insight that truth is man-made and fallible?

Maybe, but the recognition of human equality was a truth made necessary by the fact that every other idea for ordering or enforcing human inequality by economic prowess, religion, skin color, geographic origin, I.Q., or arm strength was doomed from the start.

The trouble is, of course, that technology has now empowered ideas with the ability to take us all down with them when they go.

A further trouble is, in politics those of "negative capability" often seem to be at a disadvantage in debate with stubborn ideologues. The former are made to seem weak and uncertain, the latter strong and certain, no matter how demonstrably false the ideas they cling to (the free, unregulated market comes with an invisible hand that blesses all; fossil fuels are infinite in supply and safe for the environment; war is peace, et cetera).

But who is really stronger, the coyote or the domesticated dog?

I think Barack Obama is the first president in my lifetime to possess Keat’s negative capability. The trait was made more politically attractive by its juxtaposition with the many failures of George W. Bush’s stubborn clinging to ideas already bled to death during the world’s most violent century.

I fear Obama’s attraction to Abraham Lincoln is already being trivialized by the press, but it’s a fact that Lincoln might have been the last president to possess this quality.

We should be cautious about judging Obama in the light of our own sticky ideas. It’s not that anyone should quit advocating for what they believe. Democracy depends upon it. It’s simply to put into action the recognition that in America’s gulch or green belt, if we want to survive, we’re going to have to eat a skunk or two.

120 Responses
to “Coyote Nation”

In and around Phoenix I see more coyotes in parking lots than I have out in the desert…. we also have havalina (wild pig) and black bears coming down looking for food and water. With the subdivision planners putting in artificial lakes to enhance the “look” of their planned space…….

You can try to make the desert look civilized but you cannot take the wild out of it….

An ide0logue clings stubbornly to a belief despite changing circumstance, demonstrable error etc. In some sense, we all act on our beliefs, but (in my opinion, healthy) people don’t cling, they are skeptical, especially of themselves.

So, free market freaks are ideologues who cling to a demonstrably false notion despite all the evidence. The belief becomes more important to their sense of self and security than survival. Hence, ideologues always fail. The universe doesn’t appease.

A friend played a golf course in Tuscon a few years back and told me that one of the hazards was a mountain lion that’d staked it out as territory. That would make one focus on keeping it in the fairway, I think, and even there…..

About 12 years ago, when I was still in Chicago, a pair of coyotes made it all the way down to north Michigan Ave., one of the poshest neighborhoods in the heart of the city, just north of the loop.

Selise -
All people have “ideologies” or intellectual biases of various sorts, but intelligent and well adjusted people are able to change and modify those when confronted by experience. Ideologues are prisoners of their beliefs and cannot break free of their mental shackles, plunging heedlessly over the cliff.

i don’t have a problem with this except that no one i know doesn’t “cling stubbornly” to central beliefs for some time after being exposed to contradictory evidence. so it’s really more a matter of degree – sometimes the change comes relatively quickly, sometimes it’s takes a while (even years) and sometimes it never seems to happen (but who knows, it might if we lived long enough).

There is a post over on Americablog about no acorns and reports of crazy squirrel which means starving

Builders and non-planning have been moving people living into areas that have been game areas for decades….. one of the groups fighting the border fence in AZ is the natural migration of several species that move across the border depending on the seasons.

It feels so good to think you have the answer. “Ah, I can relax, now I know.” But history is littered with corpses of comfortable answers. Truths, as Gore said, are inconvenient (and contingent). The best ones are those that make us let go of what we might believe — not necessarily the ones we find it easier to convince others about.

completely disagree. what you seem to be arguing here is not skepticism but something closer to agnosticism. making judgments on available information/evidence is not the problem – holding onto a judgment in the face of new contradictory information/evidence is.

in this regard i think it is very important to be making judgments (as you are doing), so long as we keep our skepticism intact. “we’ll see” is about deferring judgment – which is something else altogether.

I’m sorry but the choice of Napalitano is pretty much a FU to any and all Democrats in Arizona……

Gov Janet has been our firewall from the radical and wingnuts. We had really bad results in the state elections this year which moved the state MORE republican and more radical. NONE of us are happy with the pick and will hold that grudge for a long time. With the idiot Jan Brewer bubble head becoming the Gov then we can flush AZ down the toilet.

If Napalitano comes back to AZ in 2010 to run against McCain she will NOT receive any support for the race but if she stayed and stuck by the state then we would kill ourselves to get her elected…..

I think Glenn’s point is the need for mental flexibility rather than rigidity in dealing with an ever changing world (the only kind we have ever had). A large part of the problem with Republican governance is their inability to change their minds when faced with contrary evidence (witness McCain’s comments on the campaign trail that the fundamentals of the economy were strong). There is nothing wrong with strong beliefs and embracing an ideology, but you have to be willing to adapt your beliefs to reflect the real world. I am a socialist, but I do not believe (for the most part) in revolutionary action or mass nationalization of all industries. My beliefs have evolved and been modified by experience and seeing what works and what does not. Revolutions generally turn out poorly and overly centralized economies fail.

Yes, there is that danger, as I said in #19 above. You can’t even cling to non-clinging. There’s considerable discussion of this in many Buddhist texts, in American pragmatist philosophy, even in deconstruction (gasp!).

Scientism is just what you say — and ideology.

I want to quickly add that we can disappear down a lot of logic holes here. Meaning persists, of course, it is in our very grappling.

One problem I have is that this doesn’t submit to a formula of some kind. There’s a lot of feeling involved, and as I said, I remain a bit unsettled even with this small presentation. And I’m arguing that the unsettled feeling is a good thing.

DrDrick, I’d say your personal experience is a great example of what I’m talking about. If you’ve written about that journey and I’ve missed it, please point me to it. If you haven’t written about it, you should. There’s a lot more said by people clinging to old beliefs than there is by people with the courage to adapt.

My argument: if one defines “ideology” as “rigidity,” or a “lack of curiosity,” then of course we can all agree that’s foolish. But it’s also a straw man in the current environment.

Popularly, rigid people are also conflated by establishment types with people who have ideas and beliefs that do not comprt with those of the establishment, and the defining of ideology in the way you present it serves to attack people in the service of established power, rather than respond to evidence or ideas.

I don’t believe anyone is without a worldview or a set of privileged values/beliefs, which is to say I believe the notion of an ideology free person is by its nature errant and illogical.

It is, however, a useful piece of rhetoric commonly deployed to attack people with alternate ideas, and thereby short circuit rational discourse.

I really do not talk much about myself in that sense and often feel uncomfortable doing so. I really think that each of needs to undergo a kind of personal journey to discover what is important to us and what we need to do to accomplish that.

For me the core of my beliefs are in the fundamental equality, at least of opportunity, of all people and the need to level the playing field as much as possible to allow each person to become as much as they can be. To do any less harms us all both spiritually (though I am thoroughly agnostic) and materially. I also hold that we have a responsibility as a society to care for those who cannot care for themselves and that food, shelter, and access to quality medical care are human rights, not privileges.

What is nature or nurture? If a person is raised in a strict Repug house, watch Faux & wingnut radio all your life….. do not have a liberal arts education or exposed to opposing views is this rigid mind set from nature or nurture?

Studies found that children who are insecure, easily scared and need authoritarian figures grow to be Republicans….

Is it the lack of exposure to a broader world view that makes them rigid?
Personally I have found that some Republicans when exposed to things like travel, other cultures and a broader world view tend to be less rigid and embrace some liberal ideas ….

One example is my project manager whose father lost his medical insurance coverage because the insurance changed their “region” and incurred huge medical expenses, bankruptcy. This person called me before the election to convince me to vote for Obama because America needs universal healthcare ……. this guy was your traditional Republican.

i’ll try. we have in general two major mind sets in us politics. before the 60s we were more or less homogeneous as a nation. then came the religious push from the right to change reality to comport with their ideals. before that there was no problem with keeping one’s own set of values as a private matter. for example, saw a book interview with an x-cia official/analyst who said WE don’t get the middle east at all bc we insist in trying to create our christian/democracy model there. why is there such a disconnect between believers and others?

here’s where i think i’m going… the argument, if i understand correctly, goes something like this:

1) obama is great because he is “not an ideologue” / pragmatic / “possess Keat’s negative capability” / etc

2) but belief (in #1 above) does not require evidence to support it and furthermore when challenged with dis-confirming evidence is frequently defended with claims that one “can not judge” / “does not know” / “it’s all too complicated” / etc.

this seems to me to be a circular argument about why it’s ok to make positive judgements about obama, but not negative ones. because we’re not supposed to apply the same level of skepticism to both categories of judgments.

but i’m not sure i’m understanding the argument… which was why i was trying to start at the level of assumptions instead of conclusions. maybe that just confused things more….

I don’t think it’s the case that we all agree to reject the rigid and the stubborn. I wish we (the big, universal, collective we) did. Bush was given a good deal of credit for being rigid and stubborn, at least early on. It was viewed as courageous.

Authoritarians of many stripes take pride in their rigid views. And get credit for it.

You’re right that those holding views that challenge established power are often labeled as ideologues. Limbaugh’s “femiNazis” for instance. And it is critical to challenge such frames, of course.

And I think there is a profound difference between someone who has read Marx and believes Stalin was a Marxist who did no wrong — an ideologue, for sure — and someone who is constantly open to new circumstances and new evidence, even though the latter certainly has core beliefs.

. . . there is absolutely no secret about its (Buddhism’s) most important teaching . . . the instruction is simply, “Pay attention. Observe your thoughts and feelings. Look closely at what is going on. Tell yourself the truth.”

I would argue that we were in fact more heterogeneous as a nation prior to 1950. There were far more pronounced local and regional differences than today. The interstate highway system, television, and greater economic mobility have all homogenized American culture.

you explain very well what i think is part of the source of the irritation i felt when reading the post (well that and the idea that coyotes do well because of their lack of ideology. what happened to well adapted to their environment and other evolutionary-type thinking?). but i don’t think that’s what glenn is really doing here… so was trying to ask questions…

I don’t think it’s any better (in any sense) to make a positive judgment about Obama, as I did, than any negative judgment. There might be immediate practical consequences of the two sorts of public judgments that deserve public discussion.

I freely admit I am making as much a prediction as anything else. There’s evidence that I’m wrong about Obama. And that needs attention.

An example. One place I have publicly disagreed with him — long ago — in a paper with Lakoff, was his health care plan, which I feel doesn’t challenge the private health care industry sufficiently. I could have been right, I could have been wrong. As someone above said, we’ll see.

Looking at the health care plan, then, am I here applauding Obama for being “flexible,” and taking what he views as a more practical and achievable path to health care reform? No. There’s a difference between heartfelt political and mental agility and compromise.

It’s just my feeling that he thinks about these things. He moves forward, but not with absolute certainty. And I like that.

Another fine piece of writing and far too rich for one post-Thankgiving meal…I will return as many times as it takes for me to digest the entire banquet you’ve laid out here but at this moment I would jest like to say the the whole “dialectic” concept of ideas implies a few meals of skunk to stimulate the next ANTI-skunk. I wouldn’t despair of the popularizers and the opportunists who are already degrading the Obama’s attraction to Lincoln ‘cuz as long as the relationship of ideas to human experience and the synergy between competing systems of ideas remains constant and within our understanding we will be able to constinue to generate new “syntheses” out of our experience with the sorld.

Please post more front pages, our community needs ta follow the trail of our own ideas through the forest of contradictions that reqires a clear minded trial guide.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, IDEAS ARE LIKE SEX…THEY’RE HERE TO STAY!!

The only constant is change. Prior to 1950 there were many events that created homogeneity including WWI WWII and a depression. Subsequent to 1950 there have been things that have created heterogeneity including Vietnam, birth control, and the impacts of SS.

I also like the idea that Obama moves forward without absolute certainty. Bush had absolute certainty and look where that got us. Your Keats quote says “doubt with any irritable reaching after fact and reason” – that lack of certainty has really made a lot of people irritable but I do think that Obama thinks carefully regardless, or perhaps because of, his uncertainty.

You know, I don’t think there are any equivalents on today’s left to those Stalinist apologists. Maybe there are big differences in what are believed to be winning tactics. I, for instance, don’t agree with many of Code Pink’s tactics, but I think I am more open to the possibility that they are right than they are to the possibility that they are wrong.

I’m learning something from the comments, a confusion I know but didn’t speak to — something I should have included in the post. It’s kind of the reverse of your fear. Compromise is labeled as pragmatic, and smart. In a piece I wrote long ago for the Texas Observer (can’t find a link), I spoke of political sophistication being the enemy of courage.

So, we have to watch for mis-labeling by the right, and mis-characterization by our own.

I might very well be proven wrong about Obama. But, unsettled as I am, I don’t think I’m wrong about the importance of heartfelt political and mental agility.

yes, sir. just realized that. i was talkin about political differences that were not expressed on a global scale. your point was that communication/trans has possibly exacerbated pre-existing conditions? probably so.

I watched a pair of coyotes in the west overrun area at Burbank airport. They were watching the guy driving the mowing tractor ….
I also startled one, under the powerlines going into the Northridge substation. I apologized to it.

I am really hopeful that Obama will continue to explore the “Loncoln experience” and identify with the situation of dealing with the fractire of a civil war rather than identifying exclusively with FDR and the experience of the “New Seal”. What I find hopeful is Obama’s growing understnading the we must “think anew and act anew” and fuckin around with definitions and arguments at the expense of action will kill us.

Well, since the current debate about ideology vis-a-vis Obama on the left has to do with people calling critics of Obama from the left rigid and foolish ideologies and purity trolls who need to be shunned rather than engaged, I’m finding it hard to understand the actual point of the post in the current debate and context.

If it’s an academic, esoteric, philosophical exercise, that’s one thing, but it’s been put together and injected into a larger debate that is occurring within a context.

So, if there is no one on the contemporary left who represents your definition of an ideologue, then what’s the point of the post? What are we talking about?

My bias: I don’t find esoteric, philosophical, academic debates useful in our political context. In fact, I often feel they waste time rather than promote change. I’m an activist.

I lived in a small town in the Black Hills for several years and had coyotes for neighbors. One experience comes to mind though it was several coyotes chasing one through traffic – totally oblivious to cars and trucks – It seems the one had invaded an area where he was not welcome.

I saw the movie “Amazing Grace” last night- in which the hero practices the art of banging his head against the wall for years until one day- things have changed and the wall has disappeared- and he pushes against an open door….

Mass communications and rapid transport have served to minimize many of the cultural differences among us on a regional level. I do not think that modern immigration is any greater (it is in fact proportionally smaller than in the early 20th century) than it previously. The major difference is where immigrants are coming from. We are getting far more Asian, Latin American, and African immigrants and fewer European immigrants. Arguably the cultural differences are greater for these new immigrants, but their adjustment and accommodation to America are no more difficult. I think we are divided in different ways than we once were and those divisions are becoming increasingly less regional (except in the South) and more rural/exurban/urban and class based.

You know, there was s’posed to be a bit of humor in the metaphor about coyotes and ideologues. The serious part was about adapting our thinking to the environment, just as you say. Now, I really do have to go or I’m going to be late, though I’m flexible enough to live with that. I think.

I became a socialist because I saw that the greatest underlying obstacle to achieving the goals I had established was extreme, pervasive economic inequality. We can never achieve those goals without eliminating that inequality, especially the hereditary components (>80% of the wealthiest individuals inherited their wealth).

Compromise is labeled as pragmatic, and smart. In a piece I wrote long ago for the Texas Observer (can’t find a link), I spoke of political sophistication being the enemy of courage.

I like what Marshall B. Rosenberg says about compromise — too often we define it as giving up something we want, as long as the other guy gives (up) something we want. A lose/lose orientation. Rosenberg comes from a stance that, when we are able to see each other’s needs, and look for solutions that meet ALL those needs, then what we call compromise involves no loss.

Health Care will be a battle ground. Hillary failed at getting her solution enacted- and it was not a bad plan…Obama will probably settle for less than she attempted- but if he succeeds then he has made a permanent mark on America.

You know, I don’t think there are any equivalents on today’s left to those Stalinist apologists.

then why, if obama is not an ideologue, has he not included any progressives among his top level nominations so far? why do they (especially in the economic area which is the one i’m concentrating on) all fall within such a narrow ideological range? especially since the ideology they represent played such a big role in creating our current financial and economic crisis?

looks to me more like obama is an ideologue – but for the establishment status quo rather than for any kind of pragmatism that is not just a code word for bipartisan/center/establishment/moderate/etc.

Again I agree with you except that there are many tendencies that need to be accomodated including greed. Ultimately the new economy will need to control greed and allow for and encourage all to achieve. A new economy will be neither capitalistic nor socialistic.

Dammit. I got to get out the door but keep getting serious feedback in need of some thinking and response. Just kidding about the dammit.

Okay, as regards the current debate about Obama criticism, I am at once, I guess, joining it and trying to move up a step or two for a broader view.

As I mentioned in another comment, the consequences of the criticism deserve public debate. Are all the critics ideologues? I simply don’t know. If they are drawing conclusions based upon the personalities or histories of appointments, I wouldn’t necessarily see that coming from a strictly ideological point of view. Maybe in some cases, maybe not.

What are the possible consequences? There is (always) the danger of marginalizing oneself or ones own beliefs by insisting on outsider status, and taking any opportunity to prove it. I don’t know who that might be true about, but it’s a risk that deserves discussion. There’s also the possible consequence of weakening the Obama Administration from the get-go with criticism best made day after tomorrow. I think some of both have happened.

But I don’t agree with anyone who says the criticism should stop.

We haven’t reached a point where, say, my commitment to health care reform beyond what Obama’s suggested is marginalized because I’ve been critical of Obama’s plan. And I don’t think I’ve weakened Obama by advocating for a more thoroughgoing assault on the for-profit system.

There’s nothing distantly theoretical about the post. It was intended for activists, who, after all, also have to think, as you clearly do.

In other words, you are here in this thread performing as a great example of a thinking activist. I don’t mean that to be in any way patronizing. I’m very serious about it. If I provoked just a couple of thoughts — especially disagreements — then the post was well worth the trouble to write and the time to read.

Greed is certainly part of the human make-up, as are compassion and generosity. Human beings are not unidimensional, but complex beings with often conflicting tendencies. As a society we can encourage some behaviors/attitudes while discouraging others. Our current society encourages greed and selfishness, in other societies these are the worst of sins. Greed and self interest, if controlled and limited, have a role in society, but uncontrolled quickly become destructive of society itself. I do not envision a society where there are no inequalities of wealth, but rather one where those differences are minimized and largely based on personal ability and accomplishment.

The public health care option is the Pandora’s Box inside Obama’s plan- and of course the vested interests see that immediately…Don’t know if he has the power to get that one through- but if he does, then the foundation is there for universal single payer care.

of course it is way to early to say with certainty (it almost always is). but that doesn’t mean there is no evidence to evaluate – only that we have to recognize the uncertaintly and hold on to our skeptism.

i really don’t understand why negative evaluations of obama are almost always treated with cautions about it being too early to judge – and yet i almost never see the same cautions being applied to positive evaluations, even those that come with no supporting evidence. this seem to me to be the opposite of what glenn is advocating.

Just a (humorous) figure of speech. If I do not like the decisions he makes of the actions he takes, I fully intend to fling all the poo I can. I think he deserves a chance to show us what he can do without too much second guessing, but I fully intend to hold him accountable and do everything in my power to push him further to the left than he is currently comfortable with.

You are wrong about that. I approve of Janet for Homeland Security – felt she would have been best as AG. I will wait and see about the others. Yes, I personally like Obama which does not mean I do or will approve of things he does. As I said, he deserves a chance and I will give it to him. Politics is not about philosophy – it’s about doing. Those people he has appointed whom you don’t like are the tools he will use to do his job. They will not be still working for Bush or anyone else. Let’s see.

what i meant was, for example, i don’t get why it’s not too soon to approve of obama’s choice for homeland security but it is too soon to disapprove of his choices for the economics team. that’s what i was trying to get at when i wrote that you had not waited to judge.

The answer is fairly simple – I do not know enough about Wall Street and such to make a judgment. I try to keep my mouth shut when I just don’t know as much as I need to. I don’t disagree with your feelings – I respect them but I will have to see the outcome.

ah, i must have misunderstood then. i thought you were telling me to wait (ie “let’s see” and “The man deserves a chance”) – that the issue was it’s too early to judge, not that we should limit our judgments to those areas where we have enough info to judge.

if it’s the latter, then i agree completely. i don’t know enough about janet napalitano – which is why i don’t say much of anything about that choice. but i do know enough about summers et al’s record to make a judgement there.

thanks for the clairification (if i now have it right). appreciate it.

Yep. You have it right. Wall Street is a complete mystery to me. I don’t invest that way and other things interest me so much more. I’m not saying it’s not important – it is. Just not my area. Am always amazed at your knowledge and your determination to get to the truth about it.

What a grand discussion you inspired, Glenn! Thank you for your diary, come back often.

There is a great read in a book by J. Frank Dobie entitled “Voice of the Coyote”. It is his and others’ stories of actual observations of coyote behavior. Some are almost unbelievable. It is easy to see why the coyote is known as “Trickster”.

It’s been a while since I read it, but the one tale that stuck with me was about the teamwork of 2 coyotes in luring a mud hen. They spotted her on a pond too near the shore. One walked out in plain sight and began his clown performance – flips in the air, circles, rolling, leaping, etc.. The other flattened out in the reeds and inched forward. The mud hen was so distracted by the clown she did not notice the Lurker. She swam closer to shore to watch the show. Clown did his best acts — Lurker pounced. End of show. Clown filled up first and lower rank Lurker got the leavins.

Not so different from some of the tricks of the last 8 years, huh?

As for ideologues, been there done that off and on about this and that. Life has a way of knocking that out of one. I’m 74 now and don’t look for a Moses out there to lead me to some Promised Land. If Obama gives the best that’s in him when dealing with the mess he has been dealt, that’s good enough for me. I’d rather he had made some different choices, but as you say – we’ll see.

I am and will always be a hard liner about one thing: I want our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Rule of Law fully restored. No Patriot Act, no FISA, no wiretapping, no renditions, no torture, and lawful prosecution for all who have broken the Laws in place 01/01/2000—-oops, back to election day, 1999.

Yes, Glenn. I was in 5th grade when FDR died. He was a great man, but the people were great, too. Times were very hard; The Grapes of Wrath is no exaggeration. I truly hope that such can be avoided but the Wall Street madness, Paulson’s ineptitude (or criminality), and the culture of fear that Bush has bred and fed push us closer to that result.